Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/130

 But where is the testimony in favour of the effect which this intimation produced? I have it, both written and oral. My first witness is the Duke Mathieu de Montmorency, who states, in his official note of the 26th of December, that the measures conceived and proposed at Verona 'would have been completely successful, if England had thought herself at liberty to concur in them'. Such was the opinion entertained by the Plenipotentiary of France of the failure at Verona, and of the cause of that failure. What was the opinion of Spain? My voucher for that opinion is the dispatch from Sir W. A'Court, of the 7th of January; in which he describes the comfort and relief that were felt by the Spanish Government, when they learnt that the Congress at Verona had broken up with no other result than the bruta fulmina of the three dispatches from the courts in alliance with France. The third witness whom I produce, and not the least important, because an unwilling and most unexpected, and in this case surely a most unsuspected witness, is the honourable member for Westminster (Mr. Hobhouse), who seems to have had particular sources of information as to what was passing at the Congress. According to the antechamber reports which were furnished to the honourable member (and which, though not always the most authentic, were in this instance tolerably correct), it appears that there was to be no joint declaration against Spain; and it was, it seems, generally understood at Verona, that the instructions given to His Majesty's Plenipotentiary, by the Liberal—I beg pardon, to be quite accurate I am afraid I must say, the Radical—Foreign Minister of England, were the